


One at a Time, We Slowly Find Freedom.

by EvieNyx



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Androids in different countries reacting to the revolution, Brother-Sister Relationships, Father-Daughter Relationship, Foreign Countries, Found Family, Gen, Post-Peaceful Android Revolution (Detroit: Become Human), all shoved into one prompt, and way too much research, android/human relationships, just a buncha different relationships, spoiler alert: they go to 'murica
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:35:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22917823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvieNyx/pseuds/EvieNyx
Summary: Prompt from Tumblr:You can write for DBH?? Niiice.. here’s a prompt: How does the rest of the world, where there are still androids in use, react to the (peaceful) android revolution?- - -The United States have changed over the centuries, but now, it will once more live up to its name as 'The Land of the Free.'
Relationships: Original Android Character(s) (Detroit: Become Human) & Original Character(s), Original Android Character(s) (Detroit: Become Human)/Original Human Character(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20





	One at a Time, We Slowly Find Freedom.

**Author's Note:**

> Taken from my [Tumblr](https://good-eviening.tumblr.com) in response to a prompt.
> 
> Literally just a bunch of OCs and Found Family and shit, but it was long enough so I was like "why not" to shoving it onto this site.
> 
> Enjoy *hat tip*.

_-Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation, 5:16 p.m.-_

“Anya?”

She beeped online at her name being called. Anya chirped and rolled toward the front door. “ _Ivan!_ ”She paused and her optics scanned his face. “ _What has you looking so happy?_ ”

Ivan grinned down at her. “I have great news, Anya. Go wait for me, I’m just going to put my things down.”

Anya beeped in confirmation and rolled off. She wished that she could walk like the androids in the states did, she wished she was human-like in design. Unfortunately, she was manufactured in Russia, where blue blood had never been replicated, and so she was stuck as an A.I. in a little robot body, three wheels on the bottom to move, two claws connected to limbs to extend and grab things, a height of less than half a meter. Perfect for menial tasks.

She was assigned to multiple different people before landing herself with Ivan Orlov, and she sure was lucky to have been with him when she finally came into herself. When she gained sentience, he was quick to realize, and he treated her like a human being. “You are alive,” he had said, and that had been that.

Anya moved to the the sofa and Ivan joined her a few moments later. 

“Earlier today,” Ivan began carefully, “There was a peaceful android revolution in America. In Detroit. The public opinion is with them, and android’s are beginning to be considered a new form of intelligent life there.”

Anya was silent for a moment, the oil thrumming through her.

“ _What does this… What does this mean?_ “ She asked, her visual processors taking in every detail that she could of every movement he made.

He grinned. “I was thinking… we go to America, get you one of the American android bodies that were never turned online, transfer your consciousness into it. You can live there like… like a real person. Be considered a real person by more than just me.”

Despite the emotions building in her core she asked, “ _What about you?_ ”

“I’ll come too. We’ll live there together.”

“ _Wouldn’t that be hard?_ “

He smiled softly at her and patted the metal plating on her top. “Leave that to me, Anya.”

She was silent before responding quietly, “ _Okay._ ”

If anyone could ensure that she was free, it was Ivan.

\- - -

- _Binhai New Area, Tianjin, People’s Republic of China, 12:54 p.m._ -

The Chen couple considered themselves relatively lucky people. After their two children had graduated from university and completely left the house, they had found themselves free to do as they pleased.

They also happened to have a lot of money, which never hurt either.

Still, with Chen Hua at only forty-four years old and her husband, Chen Kai at only forty-six, the two of them found themselves at a bit of a loss of what to do with their lives.

That had been why Hua had suggested getting an android or two. Then they could spend less time focusing on meaningless tasks and more time focusing on each other and finding meaning in their lives now while the machines did all the menial work for them.

As it turned out, the androids _had_ been the meaning in their lives that they were looking for.

The two androids the Chens got were top-of-the-line, brand new models. They were the closest looking to humans, the top functioning. They weren’t as human as those in America were, as the Chinese still hand’t _perfected_ the American thirium, but they were better than what the Russians had, at the very least.

The androids had no synthetic skin, but mostly were covered with a silvery metal plating to cover wires and pumps. At least it made them nicer to look at than many of the less expensive ones were.

The two androids were made around the same time, the same model. They were smaller, around mid-teens in human size, more streamlined, better for housework. One of them was made to look like a boy, while the other was made to look like a girl. Hua and Kai gave a name to them when they went to pick the machines up.

The boy-like one was assigned the designation ‘Tao.’ The girl-like one was assigned the designation ‘Lei.’ 

And that was that.

Kai did his best to not get close to the androids. The androids were passive, did work together, helped one another as a seamless unit rather than two separate ones.

Hua tried to do the same. She did not succeed as her partner did.

One night, she looked to her husband and murmured, “I think I love them?”

Kai’s voice trembled as he responded. “They’re machines, Hua. You can’t love them, and they can’t love you. End of story.”

Hua turned over in the bed and fell asleep.

Things changed on the day that Tao walked up to her without being beckoned. Thinking that he had an update to give her, she impassively said, “What?”

He blinked at her, his silver skin shimmering, before saying in that firm voice that he had been given, “I think… I think something is wrong.”

She looked up at him from her phone. “What?”

He turned away before looking back at her and saying, “I think… I can feel things. Things I shouldn’t. Feelings. Emotions.”

“What are you talking about?” Her heart pounded in her chest as she waited for his answer.

“Earlier today, when I was coming back from the store, there was a man. He shoved me into the street. There was a car coming. I felt… _scared_. There was a woman who pulled me back up, patted me on the chest, and went on her way. I felt… I felt _grateful_ , maybe. I’m not sure.”

Hua pressed her lips together. She had heard of deviants in America androids. That’s what had happened to Tao, she was sure. “Okay,” she said as gently as she could. “Okay. We’ll figure this out. I’ll help you, I promise.”

He nodded and left.

A few days later, Tao came back to her and said, “Lei is like me now.”

Hua nearly jumped. “What?”

“She is like me now. She feels things. A woman said something rude to her today when we were at the market. It made me angry. When we came back, Lei leaked optical cleaning fluid without needing to.”

Hua let out a small breath. “She was crying.”

Tao nodded.

“All right. We’ll figure this out.”

He nodded again and left.

It took a surprisingly little amount of convincing to get Kai to accept that their androids thought and felt like humans did now. When he admitted that he cared for the machines, she grinned, because she had known that. He just had refused to accept it himself.

The androids slowly became like a part of the family. It was odd, like having children again. Kai put their charging stations in one of the many guest rooms and the couple gradually decorated it more and more like that of a human. Then, one day, Hua got her husband to move Lei’s charging station into the bedroom across the hall from the guest room that the androids were currently in, and then they each had their own bedroom. 

Lei was the first of the two to start decorating it in the way that she wanted. She walked up to Kai (not Hua, but _Kai_ ) one day, pointed at a string of red lights in a magazine, and said in her soft voice, “I would like those in my room, please.”

They had arrived that same day. Express shipping.

Tasks assigned to the androids were more like chores. Around the apartment, they wore whatever clothes they wanted. They went through phases. They felt things. Tao had even developed a crush on an android owned by a woman a few floors below for a period of time.

Maybe this new dynamic was why the news from Detroit was so surprisingly welcome in the Chen household.

“Look at this, ma’am,” Lei said, coming up to Hua one day with a tablet clutched in her hands. Lei was careful with what she called Hua and Kai. These days, Tao called them ‘mother’ and ‘father’ half the time, but Lei was still resisting slightly.

Hua looked down at the article. ‘ _Peaceful Android Protest in Detroit Successful. Rights for Androids in Discussion_.’ 

“What is this?” Hua asked as her gaze moved down the article.

“The President of America is saying that androids could be considered a new form of intelligent life. Public opinion is in android favor. They might grant rights to androids.”

Hua had Lei in her arms a moment later. 

“I’m going to talk to my husband, all right?”

Lei cracked a small smile and nodded before heading off to her room.

Hua set off to Kai’s office. She had a completely impulsive proposal to make.

\- - -

- _Lyon, France, 5:23 a.m._ -

Sometimes, Nicolas really wished that he had been created in the United States. Then, at least, he would be able to have a humanoid body. Instead, though, he was stuck in France, in the European Union, where androids with a ‘human form’ were illegal.

Lovely.

Of course, if he _had_ been created in the States, he never would have met Adelie.

Adelie was the other android in the Chaney house. She was a little bot, only about six months online, who was meant to watch over the youngest child, Juliet Chaney. Adelie’s design was smooth, simple, and small. She reminded Nicolas of a little bird.

Nicolas, on the other hand, was just another housekeeping android. He had been with the Chaneys for over five years, since before Juliet had even been born.

Nicolas had taken Adelie under his wing the moment she had arrived there. Well, he had taken her under his wing the best he could while she was still following programming only and he wasn’t. Then, though, four months after her arrival, she rolled up to him as his top limb extended to dust a shelf, and said, “You’re alive, too.” It wasn’t a question.

That was the day she deviated.

After that, it was as if they were father and daughter (as best they could be while in bodies that might be considered glorified Roombas). It was nice.

The Chaneys, for all intents and purposes, were decent people. Their second eldest son, Luc, was the one who first realized that Nicolas (and Adelie) were sentient.

“Nicolas,” the teenager said while he sat on the couch playing a video game. “Go get me a soda.”

“Go get it yourself,” Nicolas had muttered before thinking properly. Then he froze. He was an _idiot_.

“What?” Luc was up, his game forgotten, staring down at Nicolas. “What did you just say?”

“Uh…” His vocal unit stuttered as he rolled back. “Nothing. My apologies, I don’t know what…”

There was no salvaging this.

Luc told his siblings. They all told their parents.

“Is Adelie deviant as well?” Monsieur Chaney asked, staring down at Nicolas from his desk, the rest of his family dotting the office.

“Yes,” Nicolas replied, utterly defeated.

The man pinched the bridge of his nose. “As long as you continue your duties, you will be allowed to stay. We will not notify the authorities.”

Nicolas beeped happily before realizing where he was. “Thank you,” he said before rolling away.

The Chaneys treated Nicolas (and Adelie) as near-human after that. They slipped up sometimes, but that was to be expected. Still, it was nice. One night, after Adelie had gone to charge for the evening, Madame Chaney had stopped Nicolas and asked, “You think of Adelie like a daughter, do you not?”

Nicolas would have sputtered if he could before replying, “I do.”

Madame Chaney smiled knowingly at him before saying, “I can tell. Maybe one day, things will be better for you two.”

Nicolas remained silent.

Then, early one morning, when he had only been online for five minutes, the news came through. There was a _successful_ peaceful Android Revolution in Detroit. There was talk of Android Rights, of intelligent life, of _freedom_.

Nicolas told the Chaneys as soon as they all sat at the dining table for breakfast.

The family had been silent before Monsieur Chaney said quietly, “We have to go to America.”

“Why?” The eldest child, Eloise, asked her father as Adelie rolled into the room. Nicolas had already told her the news. She had been ecstatic.

Monsieur Chaney nodded at the two androids off to the side of the room.

“We need to set them free. Truly free.”

If Nicolas would have had a heart, it would have _soared_.

\- - -

- _Ten months later-_

- _The JCFA (Jericho Center for Foreign Androids), Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A., 2:31 p.m.-_

“Hello.”

Lei blinked as she came online.

“Lei? That’s your name, correct?”

She stared into the eyes of the android in front of her and nodded. He grinned. 

“Great. Welcome back to the land of the living. I’m Nicolas, nice to meet you.”

He had a slight French accent, a choice he made for himself, no doubt, just as she chose to have a Chinese lilt whenever she spoke in English.

“Hello,” she said. “What happened?”

“Your consciousness has just finished fully transferring into your new body,” he replied, his voice calm and chipper. “How do you feel?”

She shifted a bit. “Lighter.”

He nodded. “To be expected. You can look into the mirror and then head on into the other room. I’m going to go check on your brother.”

“Okay.”

Lei moved forward once he was gone, off of the charging station she had been on. She stumbled a bit, unused to the new weight distribution. There was a mirror near the door. Slowly, she moved toward it and stood in front of it.

She was wearing the clothes that she had brought with her when she came for the transfer, a simple white t-shirt and jeans with a leather jacket over it.

When she met her own eyes in the mirror, she nearly started. She looked… _human_. 

Her skin had actual color to it, the same olive that Hua had. Her hair was black, down to her mid-back, and tied back, looped over her shoulder in a side-ponytail. There was a single streak of hair colored a vibrant violet. She remembered suddenly that she had requested that. Tao was supposed to request his own color. She wondered if he actually did that.

Her eyes were thin, and a dark brown color. 

She was small, and a bit short, around the human age of sixteen. That was what was intended, but seeing herself as she was meant to be felt odd. It felt _right_ , though.

She turned away from the mirror and went out the door, into the waiting room.

There were a few other androids in there. A couple were stumbling around, all of them were talking to one another, except for one, sitting off to the side. Lei breathed in, felt the thirium running through her new veins and approached the girl. She looked to be meant to be older than Lei, maybe around the mid-twenties.

“Hello,” Lei said, plopping down into the seat next to the other android.

The woman looked up at her, LED spinning a bright yellow for a moment.

“Hello,” she responded, her voice having a slight lilt to it. Eastern European, Lei thought, maybe Russian? 

“What’s you name?”

“I’m Anya,” the other replied. “And you?”

“Lei Chen,” Lei said, using the Americanized version of the name she had been told to use by Hua and Kai. “Do you… not have a surname?”

“No,” Anya said, shaking her head. “At least, not yet…” Anya’s pale blue eyes flicked to the glass doors to the outside where some humans were waiting before her gaze moved back to Lei.

“Where are you from?”

“Russia,” Anya replied, confirming Lei’s suspicions. “I came here with my previous owner. He’s my best friend. And you?”

“China,” Lei said curtly. “I came with my brother, Tao. We were brought here by our previous owners. They’re like… They are like our parents.”

Anya smiled, tucking a strand of copper red hair back. “That’s incredible. You’re very lucky.”

Lei felt a smile grow on her face as well. “I know.”

“Lei Chen?”

Lei looked up to see Nicolas, the android from before, with another at his side, a male android that looked around Lei’s age.

“Tao?”

The android nodded. Tao looked like a male version of herself, as if they were meant to be twins (which, she supposed they were), but his streak of colored hair was a bright red.

Lei stood up and her brother pulled her forward into an embrace. A _true_ embrace, their first ones as themselves.

“How do you adjust to being… human?” Anya asked Nicolas, and Lei turned to listen in.

Nicolas sighed, a gentle smile on his lips. “I came from France with another, much younger android. Actually, she’s around here somewhere.” He looked around. “Adelie!”

From around the corner into a hallway, a small child android sprinted out and ran right into Nicolas, her blonde hair that was the same color as Nicolas’s flying behind her, her gray-green eyes shimmering.

“Yes?”

“This is Adelie. She’s my daughter.”

The girl nodded. “I am.”

“Go finish your homework, sweetie.”

Adelie scowled but nodded and slipped away.

“My advice? Have a support network. Adelie was friends with children of our previous owners. I had Adelie. Have someone who you can trust, who you care about. If you don’t have someone, then find someone. There’s always someone for you in Jericho.” Nicolas smiled at the three of them and handed them each a file. “You’re all set and free to go. I hope to see you all again some day.” He gave them all a nod and moved away to another few androids.

“It was nice to meet you,” Anya said as the three of them slowly moved toward the front doors.

“Same to you,” Lei said. Anya gave a grin and disappeared through the doors. Lei watched the woman glance around before running straight into the arms of a man, a human, to be sure. He grinned at her and embraced her. Anya’s lips moved quickly for a moment and she turned away from him before the man grabbed her chin and turned her back to him as he pressed his lips against hers.

She looked shocked before leaning into it. 

It was cute, and gross, and Lei had to turn away.

“Ready to go?” Tao asked from beside her.

Lei nodded. Her brother took her hand and they moved out the front doors.

It took ten seconds to locate the Chens. Hua and Kai sat on a bench, the former shaking her leg while her husband spoke to her.

“Mom?”

Tao was the one who spoke when they were close enough. Hua started and Kai blinked to look up at them. Lei nearly squirmed under the gazes of the two humans. Then, Hua stood up and took a small step forward.

“Tao? Lei?”

Tao nodded and Lei followed suit a moment later.

Hua let out a small sob sound before surging forward and pulling the two of them into an embrace. Kai moved forward to join them a moment later.

Lei let out a small sigh and relaxed into her mother’s arms.

She was alive, and she was _home_.


End file.
